Today we continue our series of posts from our colleagues outside the US, with a look at Business Wire’s experiences in Germany from Caroline Wernery, Marketing Specialist. Make sure to also read Monday’s post from Dick Bromley, RVP Europe.

Business Wire in Germany: The crisis and how we profit from US innovations

Our clients speak German and require service descriptions, website information, contracts and bills in their native language. It took us a while to learn and improve all that, but after several years in the market we are settled. BusinessWire.de now provides news and Business Wire product and service information in German, and locally-produced material allows us to serve all of our clients in the language they prefer.

The 8-person Business Wire team in Frankfurt offers news distribution in Germany, the DACH region and of course internationally. Our daily goal is to be recognized as a local news provider, not just as an international wire service.

News distribution in the crisis

During the current economic crisis – which is also being felt in Germany – it is even more important for companies to let the world know about their business and products: Companies should distribute more news to sell their products, and to find new business partners or investors. And this is exactly what we’ve experienced in recent months: Compared to last year, more news has crossed the wire . . . both good and bad news.

As in other countries, the crisis in Germany has hurt local newspapers. Now, more and more people concentrate on online media and portals. Social media sources such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook are no longer unknowns and everybody seems to be using them. Previously, Germans relied on newspapers and television; now time is more limited and people rely on current online news.

For us, as the only wire service in Germany, this development of “being online” offers lots of opportunities. During the past months, people got more and more interested in search engine optimization tools as well as services to distribute pictures and videos. “Being multimedia and getting found in the growing news jungle” is the new direction the PR community follows in Germany. Reputation management is taken more seriously: Take care of which kinds of news get found. With our SEO tools, companies can direct readers to find good news before finding bad news, letting them show up higher in search engine rankings.

Thanks to our US founders and colleagues for the great innovations they made years ago and we can now fall back on. Sometimes it takes a while for new services to get accepted over the ocean, but when people ask for them, we are the first who can offer them.

The lesson for us is clear: It is not all about language, it is all about service.

It is always coupled with challenges, working for a foreign company in Germany, due to language problems, different time zones and cultural differences. Taking the challenges and turning them into opportunities makes it exciting every day.